grammaticus Not a teacher of grammar, but a teacher of the basic arts of rhetoric, or public speaking (see rhetoric).
greaves Shin guards. Made of metal and strapped on behind the knees and ankles, they were not worn by Romans of any rank save the centurions, for whom greaves were a badge of office.
Hannibal The most famous of the Punic princes who led the forces of Carthage in their wars against Rome. Born in 247 B.C., Hannibal was taught to soldier in Spain as a mere child, and spent his youth in Spain. In 218 B.C. he invaded Italy, a shock tactic which took Rome by surprise; his crossing of the Alps (with elephants) through the Montgenevre Pass was brilliant. For sixteen years he roamed at will through Italian Gaul and Italy, defeating Roman armies at Trebia, Trasimene, and finally Cannae. But Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosis Cunctator evolved a strategy which eventually wore Hannibal down: relentlessly, he shadowed the Carthaginian army with an army of his own, yet never offered battle or allowed his forces to be pushed into battle. Because Fabius Maximus was always in the vicinity, Hannibal never quite got up the confidence to attack the city of Rome herself. Then his allies among the Italians flagged, and Fabius’s presence forced him further and further south after his hold on Campania was broken. He then lost Tarentum, while his brother Hasdrubal in the Umbrian north was defeated at the river Metaurus. Penned up in Bruttium, the very toe of Italy, he evacuated his undefeated army back to Carthage in 203 B.C. At Zama he was beaten by Scipio Africanus, after which, as the Punic head of state, he intrigued with Antiochus the Great of Syria against Rome. In the end he sought asylum with Antiochus, but after Rome subdued the King he fled again, seeking refuge with King Prusias in Bithynia. When in 182 B.C. Rome demanded that Prusias hand Hannibal over, he committed suicide. An unrepentant enemy of Rome, he was always admired and respected by Rome.
hasta The old-fashioned, leaf-headed spear of the Roman infantry. After Gaius Marius modified the pilum, the hasta disappeared from the ranks.
“hay on his horn” All ancient oxen were endowed with most formidable horns, and not all ancient oxen were placid, despite their castrated state. A beast which gored was tagged in warning; hay was wrapped around the horn he gored with, or around both horns if he gored with both. Pedestrians scattered on seeing an ox with hay wrapped round its horn, pulling a wagon through the streets of Rome. The saying “hay on his horn” came to be applied to a deceptively large and placid-seeming man after it was discovered he could turn and strike very suddenly and destructively.
Head Count The term I have used throughout the book to describe the lowliest of Roman citizens, the capite censi, those who were too poor to belong to one of the five economic classes. All the censors did was take a “head count” of them. I have preferred “Head Count” to “the proletariat” or “the masses” because of our modem post-Marxist attitudes to these terms—attitudes entirely misleading in the ancient context (see also capite censi, proletarii).
Hellenic The term used to describe Greek culture after Alexander the Great expanded Greek influence so dramatically throughout the ancient world.
Hercules, Pillars of The narrow passageway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea was known as the Pillars of Hercules because of the presence of two huge rocky outcrops, one on the Spanish side called Calpe (modern Gibraltar), and one on the African side called Abydus.
herm A pedestal upon which originally the head of the god Hermes was mounted; it was traditionally adorned about halfway up its front side with a set of male genitals, the penis erect. By Hellenistic times it had become the custom to mount all busts upon herms, the term having come to mean a pedestal possessing male genitalia. A visitor to any modern museum owning ancient bust pedestals will note the presence of a square cavity about halfway up the front side; here there once proudly reared two testicles and an erect penis. The herms were defaced during Christian times.
Hippo Regius Modern Annaba, in Algeria.
Hispania Modern Spain. Also called Iberia.
Hispania Citerior See Nearer Spain.
Hispania Ulterior See Further Spain.
hubris A Greek word which is still used today. It means overweening pride.
hydra-headed monster A creature killed by Hercules. It had seven snaky heads, and when a head was cut off, it grew back again at once. Thus the term came to be used of any dilemma which seemed solved, only to grow back again.
Hymettan honey Honey gathered from the bees of Mount Hymettos, one of the hills around Athens. The reason the honey was so universally prized did not lie in the flowers the bees visited, but in the fact that Hymettan apiarists never smoked their hives when gathering the honey.
Hypanis River The modern river Bug.
Icosium Modern Alger (Algiers).
Ilium The Roman name for Troy.
Illyricum The wild and mountainous lands bordering the upper Adriatic on its eastern side.
Ilva Modern Elba. It was rich in iron ore; this the Ilvans mined. They smelted the ore on Ilva to the bloom stage, then shipped the bloom iron “sows” to Pisae and Populonia for refining.
imago, imagines (pl.) The beautifully painted and be-wigged, most lifelike mask of a Roman family’s consular (or perhaps praetorian) ancestor. It was made out of beeswax (those who have been to Madame Tussaud’s will understand how lifelike a beeswax face can be), and kept by the ancestor’s direct descendants in a dust-free cupboard shaped like a miniature temple. The cupboard—though prestigious families usually had more than one ancestor so honored, thus owned many cupboards—was placed in the atrium of the house near the altar to the household Lar and Penates. The mask and its cupboard were the objects of enormous reverence. When a man of the family died, an actor was employed to don the imago and impersonate the ancestor. If a man became consul, his mask was made and added to the family collection; occasionally a man who was not consul did something so extraordinary he was considered deserving of a mask.
imperator Literally, “the commander-in-chief” or “the general” of a Roman army. However, the term gradually came to be given only to a general who won a great victory; in order to apply to the Senate for permission to celebrate a triumph, the general had to be able to prove that after the battle, his troops had formally hailed him with the title imperator. It is of course the root of the word “emperor.”
imperium Imperium was the degree of authority invested in a curule magistrate or promagistrate. Having imperium meant that a man had the authority of his office, and could not be gainsaid (provided that he was acting within the limits of his particular imperium and within the laws governing his conduct). It was conferred by a lex curiata, and lasted for one year only; extensions had to be ratified by Senate andIor people for promagistrates who had not in the space of one year completed their original commission. Lictors bearing fasces indicated that a man possessed imperium.
insula, insulae (pl.) Literally, “island.” Because it was mostly surrounded by streets or lanes or alleys on all sides, apartment buildings became known as insulae. Roman insulae were very tall (up to 100 feet—30 m—in height), and some were large enough to warrant the incorporation of several internal light-wells, rather than the normal one. Then as now, Rome was a city of apartment dwellers.
Iol Modern Cherchel, in Algeria.
irrumator A man sucking another’s penis. Romans thought this the lowest form of sexual activity, indicating a servility and moral self-abnegation no honorable man would condone (presumably it was not considered in such a harsh light when the irrumator was an irrumatrix—a woman). As Latin obscenities were graded, this was the worst one of all. The act itself was irrumo, irrumatio.
Isara River There were several rivers named Isara. One was the modern Isere (a tributary of the Rhodanus); another was the modern Isar (a tributary of the Danubius); yet another was the modern Oise (a tributary of the Sequana).
Isarcus River The modern Isarco, in northern Italy.
isonomia Originally this Greek word mean “equality.” However, the sixth-century B.C. A
thenian statesman Cleisthenes, popularly supposed to have evolved the form of government the Greeks called democracy, applied the tag isonomia to the concept of democracy.
Italia This name was reserved for the Italian Peninsula south of the rivers Arnus and Rubico, though it is doubtful if a Roman ever thought of the peninsula as a nation when he called it Italia.
Italian Allies Those people, tribes, or nations (they are variously described as all three) which lived in the Italian Peninsula without enjoying either the full Roman citizenship or even the Latin Rights. In return for military protection and in the interests of peaceful co-existence, they were required to furnish properly armed soldiers for the armies of Rome, and to pay for the upkeep of these soldiers. The Italian Allies also bore the chief burden of general taxation within Italy at the time of Gaius Marius, and in many instances had been obliged to yield part of their lands to swell the Roman ager publicus. Many of them had either risen against Rome (like the Samnites) or sided with Hannibal and others against Rome (like parts of Campania). Rome’s most successful way of keeping the Italian Allies in their place was to implant “colonies” within their borders; these colonies consisted of a nucleus of Roman citizens and a community enjoying either the Latin Rights (most commonly) or the full citizenship, and they were of great influence in the lives and policies of the Allied states surrounding them. Naturally they tended to side with Rome in any of the multitudinous disputes and discontents which marred existence in the Italian Peninsula. To some extent, there was always some movement among the Italian Allies to throw off the Roman yoke, or to demand the full citizenship; but until the last century of the Republic, Rome was sensitive enough to act before this grumbling became too serious. The last great concession before the events leading to the Social War was a law passed by an unknown Roman politician about 123 B.C., which allowed the men who held magistracies in Latin Rights communities to assume the full Roman citizenship in perpetuity for themselves and their descendants.
Italian Gaul Gallia Cisalpina—that is, Gaul-on-this-side-of-the-Alps. I have called it Italian Gaul in the interests of simplicity. It incorporated all the lands north of the rivers Arnus and Rubico, on the Italian side of the formidable semicircle of alpine mountains which cut Italy and Italian Gaul off from the rest of Europe. It was bisected from west to east by the mighty Padus River (the modern Po), and there was a marked difference in the nature of the lands on either side of the Padus. South of the river, the people and towns were heavily Romanized, many of them possessing the Latin Rights. North of the river, the people and towns were more Celtic than Roman, and at the time of Gaius Marius, the number of Latin Rights communities were limited to Aquileia and Cremona only; Latin was a second language at best, if spoken at all. Politically Italian Gaul dwelled in a kind of limbo, for it had neither the status of a true province nor the benefits—such as they were—of the Italian Allies. In the time of Gaius Marius, the men of Italian Gaul were not recruited into the Roman infantry, even as auxiliaries.
iugerum, iugera (pl.) The Roman unit of land measurement. In modern terms one iugerum was 0.623 (or five eighths) of an acre, or 0.252 (one quarter) of a hectare. The modern user of British imperial and American measure will get close enough in acres by dividing the number of iugera in two; the modern user of metric measure will be very close in hectares by dividing the number of iugera in four.
Iulus The son of the Trojan hero Aeneas. Both in ancient and in modern times there is much confusion as to whether Iulus’s mother was the Trojan woman Creusa or the Latin woman Lavinia. Vergil plumped for Creusa, Livy for Lavinia. What we do not know is which woman the gens Julia deemed Iulus’s mother. Iulus was also called Ascanius, this definitely being the name Homer gives to Creusa’s son. As Vergil was the official poet patronized by Augustus, a Julian, perhaps Augustus wished to have it known his Julian lineage was impeccably Trojan on both sides; what his great-uncle Caesar the Dictator thought is another matter, as Augustus tended to manipulate his divine great-uncle’s human thoughts and deeds to suit his own ends. However, it really doesn’t matter who was the mother of Iulus; the important thing is that the clan Julius implicitly believed they were the direct descendants of the son of Aeneas, and therefore also descended from the goddess Venus (Aphrodite), who was Aeneas’s mother and Iulus’s grandmother. If one considers that the time span between the arrival of Aeneas in Italy and the birth of Caesar the Dictator in 100 B.C. is about the same as the time span between the invasion of England by William the Conqueror and modern Englishmen claiming to be able to trace their lineage back to one of William’s Norman barons, then perhaps the Julii Caesares could indeed trace their ancestry back so far.
Julilla In this book, the younger daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar. There is really nothing to say that Caesar did not have two daughters; the fact that only one, Julia, is mentioned in the ancient sources is at best only negative evidence. I am endlessly fascinated with what the ancient sources considered important enough to report, and what they ignored as unimportant; and our most contemporary ancient source, Cicero, wrote for the men of his own time, so assumed that everyone knew many facts he therefore didn’t bother to mention. Julia lived to be an old woman, and was one of the most admired and notable matrons of her day; also, she was the one memorable wife of the great Gaius Marius, and the mother of a son who also made his mark on Rome. Little wonder then that her name has come down to us, whereas other female offspring of Caesar and his wife, Marcia, might naturally not be so notable. We know from Plutarch that Sulla’s first wife was a Julia, but he had three wives after her, though only the last two obtain any real mention in the ancient sources. And, bearing in mind the width of the rift which opened up between Marius and Sulla later on, it is very possible Sulla in his memoirs (used as a source by later historians like Plutarch) had little to say about his Julian wife; Julia the widow of Gaius Marius was well and truly alive when Sulla published his memoirs. For the sake of a seamless story alone, I might be pardoned for taking novelist’s license and making a younger sister of Marius’s wife Julia the first wife of Sulla. But there is more to it than that. Historical fact reveals that Sulla’s early political and military career was strongly tied to Gaius Marius; look though one will, there is nothing concrete during the years chronicled in this book to suggest that Sulla and Marius were anything other than close colleagues. All the inferences that Sulla tried to claim the credit for winning the war against Jugurtha because he had personally captured Jugurtha have their origin in two lots of memoirs published many years afterward—one, the memoirs of Sulla himself, and the other, the memoirs of Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar. At that stage, it behooved both men to diminish the reputation of Gaius Marius. Yet when one looks at the intertwined careers of Marius and Sulla between the years 107 and 100 B.C., it is impossible to infer from actual events that any enmity really existed at that stage. On the contrary, actual events suggest rather that the two men continued to be close colleagues, and trusted each other. If a feud existed between them thanks to Sulla’s alleged claims he won the war against Jugurtha, why would Marius have taken Sulla with him to Gaul as his legate? Then, all of a sudden, Sulla pops up in Italian Gaul with Catulus Caesar, right about the time Marius was committed to battle with the advancing Teutones on the far side of the Alps. But not, I think, because of any falling-out with Marius; Catulus Caesar rashly sets off up the Athesis, and then a mysterious revolt breaks out among his troops, and back down the Athesis goes Catulus Caesar—who, instead of shrieking mutiny in Rome, sits tamely with his saved army in Placentia, and waits for Marius. Of Sulla in all this, not a word, yet he was Catulus Caesar’s senior legate. One cannot claim it for certain, but it is just as logical to assume that Sulla was sent by Marius to prevent Catulus Caesar’s losing an army Rome could not afford to lose, as it is to assume Sulla and Marius had fallen out. Going back to the year 108 B.C., when Marius escaped to seek the consulship in Rome, he must have asked for Sulla’s services as his quaestor personally, for when his year in
Numidia was up, Sulla remained with Marius, the act of one personally committed to his general. Indeed, Sulla did not come home until Marius came home. He was Marius’s named choice as quaestor. Yet how would Marius ever have come to know Sulla well enough to ask for him? They hadn’t served in any campaigns together, there was a seventeen-year gap between their ages, and their life-styles were radically different, if one is to believe Plutarch. And Plutarch says Sulla’s first wife was a Julia. If Sulla’s first wife, Julia, was the sister of Marius’s wife Julia, it answers many questions. Or it may have been that the two Julias were cousins and close friends. But for the novelist, plagued by the need to keep story and characters in as small a framework as possible given the size of this particular theme, to have them sisters is perfect. Thank you, Plutarch, for mentioning Sulla’s first wife’s name! Given the inarguable fact that family was foremost to a Roman, what could be more logical than that Marius and Sulla were closely related by marriage, and that the older man was beseeched by his wife’s family to give the younger man a helping hand onto the first rung of the cursus honorum! Therefore, Julilla was born, the younger daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar, and wife of Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
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